The Daily Stoic - There’s Nothing Like This | Always The Same

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

The rockstar Warren Zevon had been on the top of the Billboard charts. He’d been on the cover of Rolling Stone. He’d been admired by other great artists and musicians like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty. The heights of fame were enjoyable, but it took a jarring diagnosis of terminal lung cancer to give Zevon the kind of perspective that only a *memento mori* moment can give. And when it came, he passed it along in a very simple, very practical piece of advice:Enjoy every sandwich.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stokeic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics,

from Epictetus Markus, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. There's nothing like this.

The rock star Warren Zayvon had been at the top of the Billboard charts. He'd been on the cover of Rolling Stone. He'd been admired by other great artists and musicians like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springstay and Tom Petty. The heights of fame were enjoyable, but it took a jarring diagnosis of terminal lung cancer to give him the kind of perspective that only a memento-mory moment can give. And when it came, he passed it along in a very simple, very practical piece of advice.

Enjoy every sandwich. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how to have a chill life, you have to be comfortable making less money, but isn't money a source of great experiences? No more so than ordinary life. The Stoics understood, the so did the Epicurians, because in the end the two schools were not that different. It wasn't success or fame or banquence or pleasure dens that made us happy. It was the simple and ordinary moments. If we could be disciplined enough and present enough to be grateful for them. Sure, it's great to write hit songs and it's wonderful to be able to travel the world to be able to afford fancy stuff to live in Marcus Aurelius' palace. But there is also

nothing like the simple pleasure of eating the sandwich, or drinking a glass of water after a run on a hot summer day, or listening to that one song that always makes you feel good. There is something haunting about the thought of how much life people throw away because they think they need a lot of money, or because they are always chasing the newest, coolest, most extreme thing. They don't realize that the greatest things in life are cheap, if not free, because they don't enjoy every sandwich. And then one day, it's too late, and they'll never have another. 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by Yours Truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman.

I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself, and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal,

anywhere books are sold, and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke store, it's store.dailystoke.com. Think by way of example on the times of Vespassian, and you'll see all these things, marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die,

grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone, the times of Trajan again the same. Marcus Aurelius' meditations for 32 and then the meditation. Ernest Hemingway opens his book, The Sun also rises with a Bible verse, one generation One generation pathis and another generation cometh, but the earth abioteth forever. The sun also rises and the sun goes down and resteth to the place where he arose. It was this passage, his fascinating editor, Maxwell Perkins, who I urge you to read about. Perkins would say that it contained all the wisdom of the ancient world. And what wisdom is

that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what's left are people living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, and laughing. Breathless media reports are popular books often perpetuate the belief that we've reached the apex of humanity or that this time things are really different. The irony is that people have believed that for centuries. Strong people have to resist this notion. They know that with few exceptions, things are the same as they've always been and always will be.

You're just like the people who came before you and you're but a brief stopover until the people just like you who will come after. The earth abides forever, but we will come and go. And I mean, I think meditations itself is a remarkable demonstration of this, probably not accidentally, right? All the things that Marcus is talking about, complaining, about worrying about, you know, seizing on are immensely familiar and accessible to all of us, right? Two thousand years ago, you know, sometime the year, let's say 160 AD, Marcus struggles to get out of bed and writes a passage about how he likes

to huddle under the blankets and stay warm. Exactly the same, right? You think about the struggles Marcus really has with comedists. Maybe that's what you're going through right now. You think of Sennaka trying to contain Nero telling himself, you know, I'm one of the good guys. I'm one of the adults in the room and you think about how politically people in the capital, which is named after a capital line hill, Senators, right, same position as people like Senika had. We're telling themselves about the current president, right? The same thing over and over and over and over again. People are people places are places.

I did a meditation on this and actually it's in like the video like a year ago. I did this. But we did this road trip and we stopped in Tombstone, Arizona, which, you know, is the side of the gunfighted okay, Kerala. And what's fascinating, you walk down the streets of tombstone, this is a place that's burned to the ground, been rebuilt to look historic for the most part. Some of the buildings actually are pretty old. But the point is, these bars, what stickers do they have in the window? The sticker is new, that

wasn't a technology in 1880 or whatever, but they got these stickers in the window. What do the stickers say? You can't carry a handgun inside this establishment, right? Same sticker I have on the, you know, front of the painted porch. But in the 1880s, that's what the gunfight at the OK Corral was about. It was about whether people could openly carry guns in town. I'm not making a second amendment argument here. I'm saying that people were fighting and arguing about

the exact same thing, just as the herbs had moved to tombstone Arizona. Why? To make their fortune, to make a name for themselves, to have a better life, the same reason that maybe you're moving to Arizona or Austin or Europe, right? It doesn't matter. People are people and they've always been doing the same things. And I think what's so beautiful and reassuring but also humbling about Stoke philosophy is these reminders that not that much has changed, that the hardware issues remain the same. The software issues remain the same despite all the updates and attempts to fix the bugs.

So we can calm down a little bit, right? You know, I think the last couple years, the media has been loved to say, this is unprecedented. It's very unprecedented, right? I recommended the Great Inf very unprecedented, right? I recommended the Great Influenza, right? What he talked about a hundred years ago, and that pandemic would have been quite familiar to Marcus and Relius in the Antennaid plague. People are people, places are places, history is the same thing happening over and over and over again. Time as Matthew Matthew McHenna Hayes character says,

in true detective, quoting Nietzsche, time is a flat circle. It's beautiful, as I said, haunting, humbling, all these things at the same time. And it's something we can't lose track of, and it's something we have to think about constantly. And when I hold meditation, that's what I think of. I've actually, I've got the leather edition right here in my hands, which you should check out, which we're just launching it.

I've so worn through my paperback edition that I wanted something a little bit more hardcore and sturdy, but it's just remarkable to me as I hold this edition. And I just, like I've usually usually been since I got my first copy of meditation, I've been going through that one. Like I have a very worn copy. It has lots of notes in it. But when I compare this new one, because I got one of the first meditations, leather ones off the presses, I went through and I've been rereading it since on my nightstand. As I've

been going through and rereading it, what strikes me most when I look at this new one and the old one is that I'm still making notes in the same spots about the same things just as other people have been doing for thousands of years. Maybe you have Sena Ka' in your nightstand just as Jefferson had Sena Ka' on his nightstand when he died. Just as, you know, Kato died holding the copy of Socrates, right? It's a timeless tradition we're a part of, both intentionally and unintentionally, and there's something beautiful and terrifying in that.

That's it for today's meditation. Enjoy it. Do check out the new edition of Meditations. I'll link to it in the show notes. You can check it out at store.dailystoke.com as well. But I'm really proud of this one. I think you'll really like it. That's my momentum-worry coin.

I think about it all the time. I'm playing with it on my desk right now. It's on that carry always. It's probably the thing I get asked about the most when I bump into people in public. It's just been a game changer for me. I have a bunch of different Memento Mori reminders, of course. But if you want to get this one,

which we make here in the US, in a mint in Minnesota, that's been in business since 1882, you can check it out in the daily store, or if you're in Bastrop you can stop by my bookstore here the painted porch on Man Street where we sell them as well it's Game Changer, check it out. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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